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A "ruthless" conwoman who pretended to be a barrister, a Wonderbra model, a wealthy heiress, a dying cancer victim and even Heston Blumenthal's "design guru" has been jailed for an "extraordinary" catalogue of frauds.

Ryley Cruz, 37, who also used the name Tanya Rowe, netted more than £61,000 from her victims – over half of it from a property developer who lavished cash on her after she contacted him through the 'Sugar Daddies' website, a court heard.

She told wealthy Steven Wood, 54, she was a successful barrister awaiting a £150,000 inheritance but that she had short term cashflow problems.

Within days he had rented a plush five bedroom Regency house in Cheltenham for her and her teenaged son to live in.

Cruz claimed to have terminal cancer

Whenever she asked him for money he would put it straight into her account – including £1,500 when she told him she had left her barrister's wig on a train and needed to buy a new one, Gloucester crown court heard.

He was left £34,000 worse off after knowing her for just a few weeks. Often when Cruz's many victims started to chase her for money she would pretend she had suddenly been stricken by cancer, the court was told.

She even managed to get herself admitted to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford where she made victims feel embarrassed and guilty about pursuing her.

On another occasion she posed as a wealthy heiress with a £30million fortune and entered into negotiations to buy a half share of Premiership rugby club Gloucester.

You are, even by the standards of the criminal courts, exceptionally devious. You played the cancer card at will and you have conned a leading hospital in this countryJudge Tabor

Her victims included property landlords, a woman pub owner, a Cotswolds cafe proprietor, a waitress who lost her £5,000 savings to Cruz, and big companies including top estate agents Hamptons International and Savills and a wealth management firm in Cheltenham.

Sometimes she used her "sexual allure" to beguile her male victims, the court was told. Cruz, of Clarence Parade, Cheltenham, was jailed for a total of five years three months by Judge Jamie Tabor QC after she admitted fourteen charges of fraud, one of posing as a barrister, and two of possessing forged documents for the use of fraud.

She denied fraud against Mr Wood and claimed he had paid her for sex – but the jury did not believe her and found her guilty.

The judge told her: "Over the past three years, on numerous occasions, you have obtained services in the form of housing and you have obtained money dishonestly."

He said she first conned a shopkeeper and a local mum in Bray, Berkshire, where Heston Blumenthal runs his Fat Duck restaurant, and then moved to Bourton-on-the-Water, Gloucestershire, where she befriended several local business people and cheated them with hard luck stories. Later she moved to Cheltenham, thanks to Mr Wood, and continued to find more victims there.

But long before her three-year trail of offending began in 2013 she had conned the magazine Grazia into running a feature about her in 2008.

Using the name 'Tanya Rowe' she told in a feature in the magazine how she had just found true love – only to learn she had terminal cancer. She claimed in the article that she had drawn up a bucket list of things to do before she died and she had posed for a photoshoot for Wonderbra.

Later that year she attended the Birchwood Park Golf Centre in Berkshire posing as a 'Wonderbra model' and joined the mayor in releasing 2,000 pink balloons for the breast cancer charity.

Judge Tabor told her: "You have shown not one ounce of remorse or regret for any of your offences. The word sorry has not been uttered by you once.

"You are a practiced and indeed accomplished liar and you are a skilled forger. You have shown callousness and selfishness.

"You are, even by the standards of the criminal courts, exceptionally devious. You played the cancer card at will and you have conned a leading hospital in this country."